


Davey and Jasp, Best Buds Forever!

by spellboundnora



Series: snapshots of three intertwining lives [2]
Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, I mean it's sorta hurt/comfort at the end i guess, but honestly there's no ships in this, but i mean it's like... they care more about each other than normal friends do, if you're squinting you can see the david/jasper, plus one of them dies so that's a cockblock, you can read david and jasper's friendship as platonic if you want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 02:06:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15831555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spellboundnora/pseuds/spellboundnora
Summary: David sees a ghost one night, but it’s someone who’s not dead. The next day, he goes somewhere he hasn't been in a long while because of bad memories and finds a lot more than he was looking for.





	Davey and Jasp, Best Buds Forever!

**Author's Note:**

> It's basically the events of “Jasper Dies At The End” and “Dial M For Jasper,” but sadder and told through David's point of view without having to put a good spin on it for the kids. And I'm saying this now because I know I'm going to end up writing a lot more CC fics, you can't prove all of my fics don't take place in the same timeline, except out of order. Maybe I'll get around to editing them so they're in a series once I write the big one that comes between this and Liability.

I saw a ghost last night. The ghost of someone still alive. Part of me wants to believe I was dreaming, but I know I wasn’t. It was my childhood best friend, Jasper. He seemed like he wanted to talk to me, but he couldn’t, for some reason. The only thing he said before he disappeared into the night was “Davey, why?” The reason I know I was awake was because I ran out of the counselors’ cabin after him and woke up Gwen. I don’t think I can tell anyone about this, no one would believe me. It must have been my mind playing tricks on me, or the stress of camp getting to me. I couldn’t sleep after that, transported to fourteen years ago. The last time I ever saw or heard from him.

*Summer, 2003.*

Jasper had been my friend for the past two years. He’d been there for me through my first year at camp, where I had been lashing out and causing general havoc. I didn’t want anything to do with nature when I was first dropped off at the camp. I didn’t even want to be there, I was just dropped off by my mom and her boyfriend, who wanted to get rid of me for a couple months. I hated being at home with my mom’s boyfriend, who would do nothing but drink beer and yell at her. Any time I would try to talk to her about how much he sucked, she would wave it off and tell me how she loved him, and thought he might be the one for her, and wouldn’t it be nice for me to have a father figure in my life. So I was almost relieved at the prospect of going to camp to get away from them, but when I found out it was just a dumb nature camp, I got mad. All I wanted to do was play my Gameboy Advanced SP, that I’d gotten for my birthday, and instead, I had to go outside and do activities like fishing and hiking. So I would lash out and cause as much trouble as I could, hoping if I was bad enough, maybe they wouldn’t let me back next year and I could just stay home. Jasper shared a tent with me, and was my only friend there. He was crazy about nature, and loved the activities. He kept trying to get me to love them too, even when I opened up to him that I was just dropped off here by my parents and didn’t want to be here. He always saw the good in everything, when I just saw the bad. Everyone always thought how strange it was that the best camper and the worst were friends, but even though we were different, we needed each other to balance ourselves out. He’d drag me along to most of the activities, and I’d convince him that he didn’t need to do everything, that sometimes he just needed to relax. He was always such an overachiever. And then, towards the end of the summer last year, we went on our hike so he could receive his Order of the Sparrows award. I acted like the whole thing was dumb, but secretly, I was really happy for him. He really was the best camper there, and I didn’t only say that because he was my friend. He always empowered everyone to try their best in every activity. He was even more upbeat than the counselors most of the time.

But when things went awry that day, something changed in both of us. I realized that trying to rescue him was like being in a video game, where I was the hero and he was the damsel in distress. With Mr. Campbell as my sidekick, I had to traverse the dangerous woods, and use the wisdom that Jasper himself had bestowed upon me, to follow the stream down the cliff. I had to be a detective and look for clues to find out that Jasper had been taken by bears. And I was even part of one of those violent games Mom’s boyfriend played on the PS2 when Mr. Campbell fought off those bears to save Jasper. I talked all about it to Jasper on the way back up, and he seemed enthused that I’d finally taken an interest in nature, but something was off with him. After the whole debacle with Jasper’s patch being taken away because I’d used his light up shoes to distract the bears, he confessed to me back at the tent that he was starting to feel like the camp was kind of wack. I apologized to him about the shoes, and he said it wasn’t my fault, that if Mr. Campbell hadn’t gotten us so lost, the whole thing would’ve been fine. I stuck up for Mr. Campbell, and he didn’t really say much for the rest of the night. The next day, the whole camp was talking about how it seemed like the two of us switched personalities. I stopped acting out and started listening to Mr. Campbell more. He really was the coolest, with his amazing survival skills. Sometimes, I’d even daydream about scenarios where he would win my mom from her boyfriend, and become my new dad. He’d certainly be a better dad than her boyfriend. I even tried to introduce them when I left at the end of the summer, hoping they’d get along, but my mom didn’t really pay much attention to him. Jasper changed into the person I had been earlier in the summer, not wanting to do any of the activities, and making me drag him to them. We exchanged phone numbers, and we’d call each other sometimes throughout the school year. I threw myself into trying to be as happy and upbeat as he used to be, trying to see the best in things, even as my mom’s boyfriend continued to treat her badly. I hoped that if I was a good enough kid, then he’d start to like me and stop being mean to her.

When both of us returned to camp the next summer, me enthusiastically, and him begrudgingly, I told him all about how I tried to always look on the bright side, even when Mom’s boyfriend would get angry at her for everything. I told him that if I could get him to like me, he wouldn’t be hurt her anymore, so I had to be happy all the time. He told me that was dumb, and how he wished his dad would stop dating girls much younger than him, but he knew he couldn’t change him, so he just dealt with it. One day, while we were on a hike, we were arguing about being happy, as strange as it sounds.

“All I’m saying, Davey, is that you can’t be happy all the time! That would just be dang stupid! You have to feel sad sometimes!”

“No way, Jasp! I don’t need to be sad. No one has to be sad, they just choose to be!”

“Well, what if you had a puppy, and it got run over by a car? You’d be sad then! So there!”

“I wouldn’t be sad, I’d just look back on all of the good memories I had with the puppy and I’d be happy that I got to spend some time with it!”

“You’re just saying that. You can’t be this happy forever.”

“Yeah I can Jasp, and I will! I’ll be this happy even when I’m as old as a counselor! You wanna know why?”

“Why, Davey?”

“Because then, I’ll be a counselor here and I’ll still be going on cool hikes like this!”

“You really think you’re going to stick around that long?”

“Of course I will Jasp, I love this place!”

“I doubt this place will even last that long. Things are falling apart around here! I don’t think it’ll last the whole summer even!”

“You’re wrong, you have to be wrong! Nature is rad, and Mr. Campbell has a lot of money, enough to keep this place open forever! And someday, I’m going to take over for him and be an awesome head counselor!”

“Mr. Campbell barely cares about us! I don’t know why you can’t see that! He has no idea what he’s doing, and I’ve overheard him talking about illegal things he’s done at least three times! I don’t get why you still idolize him, Davey! You’re eleven now, you should know better!”

“Don’t talk about Mr. Campbell like that! You’re just mad that he included me in the special TV commercial he filmed yesterday! Maybe you’re jealous because he likes me better than you!”

“I don’t give a dang whether he likes me or not! He’s probably just running this camp as some sort of scam! I don’t know why you can’t see the shady things he does. You just put too much faith in him because you want him to be your dad! Well guess what? He’s not, because he doesn’t care about you!”

Jasper won that fight. I didn’t have anything to say after that. I just tried to keep myself from crying because big kids don’t cry, and if Jasp saw me, he’d just rub it in that I can’t be happy all the time. I tried, I really did. Sometimes I felt like it worked, too, but he was right. I couldn’t control it sometimes. There was tension between us for the rest of the walk.

Later that night, once we got back to our tent, I asked him if he was mad at me.

“No Davey, I’m not mad at you. I’m just trying to get you to see that the world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. I could never be mad at you for very long, because you’re my best friend.”

“And I just wanted you to see that when you have a positive outlook, things will always turn out okay in the end. That’s why we work well together, we balance each other out. I’m happy, and you’re realistic. I’m glad you’re not mad at me, best friend.”

“Of course we work well together, we’re Davey and Jasp, best buds forever!”

“You’re dang right about that.”

“A dang, from you, in my favor? I feel honored.”

“Maybe you’re just rubbing off on me too much.”

And with that, we went to sleep, sure that nothing would get in the way of out friendship.

Two weeks later, Mr. Campbell told us the camp would shut down, and Jasp gave me a look that said “I told you so,” and “I’m sorry,” at the same time. We tried to find the ideas folder together, and we had another fight where I told him that I would tell on him for going off the path and trying to find evidence against Mr. Campbell, and that was the last thing I ever said to him. Mr. Campbell and I did manage to save the camp, after our idea for a Camp Camp, but I lost Jasper as a friend. And the next day, Mr. Campbell told me that his parents picked him up, for some unknown reason. I figured it was because he didn’t want to be my friend anymore, and didn’t ever want to see me again because I’d picked the camp over him.

*Present day.*

“David. David. DAVID!”

Gwen startled me out of my reminiscing and I shot out of bed, almost not believing that it was already morning.

“Have you slept at all since that weird nightmare you had? Because it’s almost time to wake up the campers, and you look dead. I can make you some coffee if you want.”

“Thanks, but coffee makes me all jittery. I’ll be okay.”

“Was it really that bad? You look like somebody died.”

“I saw the ghost of my childhood best friend, Gwen. Even though he’s not dead, I was a terrible friend to him, and I just wish I knew what happened to him after he left camp.”

“Do you know his last name? You could look him up after breakfast, see if he has a Facebook or something if it’s really tearing you up.”

“Maybe I will. But for now, I’m going to try to put on a happy face, and get to breakfast!”

I couldn’t shake my melancholy, as hard as I tried. I wondered what Jasper would think if he was here. Would he be happy for me that I really had become a counselor? He’d probably be mad at me for how I try to still be happy all the time, even if it means bottling up the rest of my emotions. I tried to stop at one point but learned pretty quickly that if I wasn’t making an effort to be happy, I just became a downer. Plus, I had to be a good influence for the kids! Even if they didn’t listen to me, I still had to be upbeat and happy around them. Honestly, the least happy I’d been around the kids was when I tried to get the camp involved in the Order of the Sparrow, and I snapped at Max. And now I’m thinking about Jasper and the Order of the Sparrow again. Come on, put on a happy face, David, do it for them!

Against my better judgment, I decided to take the picture of Jasper and I to breakfast with me. It was one of the few pictures I had of him, and though I knew it would just make me even sadder, I needed it right now. I tried to eat my breakfast, but Max, Neil, and Nikki kept trying to figure out why I wasn’t my usual self. Normally, I’d be appreciative of their concern for me, but I couldn’t deal with it today. I ran out of the mess hall and decided that I needed to go to Spooky Island, to try to give myself some closure, or else just wallow in reminiscence where I wouldn’t be disturbed. Gwen could control the camp for one day.

I took a rowboat out and put it on the lake, starting out across it. While rowing, I wondered about the island. I tried to go there as little as possible since it made me so emotional, and I hadn’t been in a while. I didn’t know if any of the other camps ever did activities there, and if they did, I hoped they wouldn’t be there today. I just needed some time alone. Usually, I got my happiness from being around others, from just being invested in life, but today, I just needed to take a step back from it. I guess I’d finally learned Jasper’s lesson- that I couldn’t be happy all the time.

When I reached the island, I found it thankfully devoid of people. I wandered the path up to Mr. Campbell’s summer home and saw the spot where Jasper deviated from the path all those years ago. Unconsciously, I found myself walking down there. There was the rubble of the cave. The last place I’d ever seen him. Mr. Campbell had never explained what happened to the cave, just told us all that it was dangerous now that it was just a pile of rubble and not to go near it. I lied down on the grass near the rubble and let my sadness pour out of the bottle I’d kept it in for so long. I missed Jasper so much that I started to cry. It seemed silly to get so worked up over someone I hadn’t seen in almost fifteen years, but before then, I’d never had someone I was as close to as I was to Jasper. And even after we stopped talking, it took a long time for me to find someone I was almost as close to, and that was Gwen, who I didn’t meet until high school. I didn’t make friends very easily as the permanently happy kid who would sometimes just break down when the mask became too heavy to wear. Even after I stopped being happy in an attempt to make things at home better than they were, I still wore a mask of perpetual happiness because it seemed like the only option. What would people know me for if not my upbeat attitude? Jasper and I were inseparable all those years ago, and I still wondered what would’ve happened if I’d chosen him instead of the camp. Would it have gotten shut down? How would my life have played out if I’d stayed friends with him, if every call I’d made to his house didn’t just give me a dial tone, if we’d continued through that summer as Davey and Jasp, best buds forever? If the camp had stayed open even after I’d chosen Jasper, would we have continued going together? Would I have helped him be less pessimistic, and would he have helped me to realize that I don’t have to be happy all the time, before it was too late and it was the only thing I could be?

And then I heard a rustling in the bushes. I sat up and quickly wiped my eyes, hoping it wasn’t a camper and just a wild animal, because I didn’t want anyone seeing me like this. But what came out of the bushes was neither a rogue camper nor our platypus mascot that would appear to terrorize people at random times. It was Jasper himself. But it couldn’t be. For one, he hadn’t aged at all since the last time I’d seen him, and there was no good reason for him to be here if he hadn’t been a camper in so long. I was speechless as Jasper, or whatever the being that looked like him was, started to speak to me.

“Davey! You came! I hoped me getting your attention last night would work, I’ve been trying to test my limits for so long to get all the way across the lake to you for so long. I needed to get you here alone so we could talk, and every time you’d come here before, you were always with campers, but then you stopped coming at all, and I got concerned that something might’ve happened to you, or that you left the camp. So I slowly started getting stronger until I made it all the way to your cabin! Davey, are you okay? I mean, I know it’s a bit of a shock, but someone had to have told you I was here all this time, right?”

“You can’t be real. There’s no way this is real. You have to be a hallucination. I’m just finally snapping after all these years. You’re not real.”

“I’m real, Davey. You’re acting like you didn’t know I’ve been here. There have been campers who have seen me, I mean, even the Quartermaster has seen me, and you’re telling me that none of them told you?”

“Okay, even if this is a hallucination, I’m just going to go along with it. No, I didn’t know you were here. The last time I saw you was when we had our fight. The next day, Mr. Campbell told me that your parents picked you up. So, why are you here? It’s been almost fifteen years, why haven’t you aged?”

“Davey. He lied to you. This cave here, it was full of explosives. I got caught in the crossfire. I died that day. I’ve been stuck here ever since as a ghost, trying to figure out what I needed to do to get closure and finally, I figured it out. It’s you. I needed to talk to you.”

I was struck speechless with the vision of an explosion, and a young boy, a young ghost, in the aftermath. He must have been so scared. Stuck on an island where the only people to ever come by were the Quartermaster and a few rogue campers every so often, plus the occasional camp activity set here. Seeing his best friend slowly grow from a kid, a young camper, to a teen, an older camper, gone for a few years, and then back, as an adult, a counselor, like he always said he would be. Leading camp activities here, coming less and less, and then finally, not at all for a few years. Fourteen years in total of being here. Fourteen years of searching for closure, for company, for someone to talk to. And I started to cry again.

“Jasper. Oh God, Jasp, I’m so sorry. No one ever told me, I believed Campbell’s story. I didn’t think he’d lie to me. I- I don’t know what to say. You’ve been here for fourteen years and it’s my fault. I’m so sorry.”

“Hey there Davey, it’s okay. It’s not your fault, you couldn’t have known. I’m just surprised no one ever told you I was here. Has it really been fourteen years? Wow, that means you’re… twenty-five. No wonder you look so grown up, you’re a real adult now. Still have plans to take over for Campbell when he finally kicks the bucket?”

We talked for a while, about life now, about growing up, about the campers here. Jasper said he’d seen Max, Neil, Nikki, and Space Kid before, which made me wonder why none of them ever mentioned anything back when I told them the story of the two of us that one time in the car. I couldn’t believe after all this time, he’d been so close, that I could’ve found him at any point, but it took fourteen years. It almost felt like nothing had changed between the two of us, that we were still just Davey and Jasp, best buds forever. Until he mentioned that we should talk about the day he died.

“Davey, I love talking to you, and I wish we could stay here forever, but I can feel my soul getting restless. It needs closure. I think it’s time we talk about my last day.”

“Jasp, I’m so sorry about how I acted that day. I should’ve seen through Campbell’s facade. He’s proved time and again that he doesn’t care about this camp, that he’s only using it to make money. You were right the whole time. I was a terrible friend. I hope you can forgive me.”

“Davey, of course I forgive you. I never wanted you to apologize, you were right. Just because I had one bad day at camp, I became a cynical and pessimistic person. I knew how much the camp meant to you, and I shouldn’t have been working to try to bring it down. Who cares if Campbell’s a square? You needed this camp, and I tried to take it away from you for my own selfish gain. I’m so sorry, Davey. Will you forgive me?”

“Of course I do. You were my best friend, one fight never should’ve been the end for us. We cared about each other in our own way, with you trying to get me to see the world wasn’t perfect and I couldn’t be happy until it crushed me, and me trying to get you to see the good in things like you once did. You’ve been my friend this whole time, even when I hadn’t seen you in years. So of course I forgive you.”

“Oh Davey, I’m going to miss you. Thank you for giving me closure, you’ve always been my best friend. See you on the other side, hopefully not anytime soon. Goodbye.”

And with that, he began to fade away.

“Goodbye, I’ll miss you, but we’ll always be Davey and Jasp, best buds forever.”

And then he was gone. Like he’d never been there. And I cried harder than I ever have. Harder than when Campbell told me that his parents picked me up. Harder than when the kids at school told me I was weird for fluctuating from super happy to crying in class, and that none of them wanted to be friends with me. Harder than when a creep in high school wouldn’t stay away from me until, when he put his hands on me, Gwen came to my rescue and fought him off, saying she’d take a million suspensions if it meant keeping me safe. Harder than graduation day, when it hit me that Gwen and I were going to different colleges. Harder than every heartbreak I’ve ever had, when I tried dating around at college out of loneliness and it went miserably. Harder than when a young boy came to camp my second year as a counselor, with his cynicism and sarcasm that reminded me so much of Jasper, and a home life that reminded me of mine. Harder than the night after I’d almost let Daniel kill everyone at camp because of my naivety, and I had a dream that he’d succeeded and it was all my fault. And I sat there, and I cried. I cried for what felt like hours. Even when I heard footsteps on the path near where I was, I didn’t have it in me to stop. Even when I heard whispers that I was sure were about me, I just kept crying.

Until I heard footsteps come off the path and down to where I was. And a voice that I knew, but was much less harsh than normal.

“Hey. So, I know about Jasper, I blackmailed the Quartermaster into telling me. It’s, uh, really shit that Campbell lied to you about it. We heard you guys talking earlier, but decided to leave you alone, because, well, it was probably important. So I guess you two got the closure you both needed. All I have to say is, you don’t have to keep up the permanently happy shit around us. You’re a human, not a robot. You’re allowed to feel things. You don’t have to run away every time you get sad. I mean, if Gwen did that, we’d never get anything done, so why should you have to? I guess what I’m trying to say is, we care about you, even if it doesn’t seem like it sometimes, whether you’re happy or sad or pissed or scared. We’re here for you, not your mask of happiness. Sorry, that was kind of shit, I’m not really good at comforting people, it’s usually the other way-”

And he was cut off by me bringing him into a giant bear hug. Even if he doesn’t show it often, and it seems like he lives to piss me off sometimes, I know that it’s a disguise, just like my happiness sometimes, that he uses anger to cover up the fact that he cares.

“Thank you, Max. That was what I really needed to hear right now. I care about all of you guys too, and I always just wanted to be a good role model, but I didn’t realize how unhealthy it was to bottle everything up. I’m going to work on feeling my emotions, even when I don’t want to. It might be hard at first, but I’ll get through it because I have you guys. But who did you mean when you said we? Are there other people here?”

“Uh, yeah, about that. Neil and Nikki are here too, we came to look for Jasper too, once we found out the whole story, but we saw you talking to him, and figured it was more important for you two to get closure than for him to answer all of Neil’s science of ghosts questions, and all of Nikki’s questions about how big the explosion was. So we wandered around the island for a while, and we were coming back to were we docked the boat so we could leave, because it’s dinner time, and we heard you crying. So those two assholes shoved me down here with you because they thought I’d be the best at comforting you or whatever, which I’m sure isn’t true, but I didn’t really have any choice, so I went with it. It’s not like I wanted to or anything. We should go back to the mess hall and get some food, I’m fucking starving.”

I smiled at his attempt to deter the conversation after admitting that his friends thought he’d be good at comforting me. To their credit, he was pretty good at it. I stood up from where I’d been sitting for so long in my sorrow. Maybe, I’d be okay. It would take a while to get over this whole thing, and I’d have to have some words with Mr. Campbell, but I was feeling a little better already thanks to Max.

“Okay, Max. Let’s go get some food.” I reached down and ruffled his hair. “And watch your language.”


End file.
